


in the aftermath

by thekatriarch



Series: Aftermath [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:35:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22431202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekatriarch/pseuds/thekatriarch
Summary: Her own injuries were not critical, but she refuses to leave the medical bay. If he ever wakes up, she wants to be the first thing he sees, which is, perhaps, a foolish, romantic impulse; Cassian himself would find it ridiculous, she’s sure. But everyone else is dead and she has nowhere else to be. She sits and waits.* * * * *my take on a "what if Cassian and Jyn made it off Scarif" story, where they hang out in the infirmary while A New Hope happens in the background.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Series: Aftermath [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627852
Comments: 8
Kudos: 108





	in the aftermath

Don’t ask her how they got out. She can’t remember. Sometimes she’s not completely sure they really did — maybe this is just some dream, some illusion produced by the last sputter of neurons firing in her dying brain. Or maybe she’s dead, and this is hell. Maybe this is what hell is: waiting, alone.

Cassian is in the bacta tank. He might live. He might not. If your organs are damaged enough, even bacta can’t save you, and his are very damaged. How the hell did he ever manage to stand up in the first place? She remembers watching him fall, hearing the awful sound of his body hitting the floor and knowing, _knowing,_ that he was dead. And then, somehow, he appeared; right when she needed him most, there he was. How?

Her own injuries were not critical, but she refuses to leave the medical bay. If he ever wakes up, she wants to be the first thing he sees, which is, perhaps, a foolish, romantic impulse; Cassian himself would find it ridiculous, she’s sure. But everyone else is dead and she has nowhere else to be. She sits and waits.

* * * * *

Someone comes to talk to her; she needs to be debriefed, the person insists. They ask her questions about what happened and she tries to answer them, but everything is fuzzy; a minor concussion has scattered her memory. She knows that she transmitted the plans. The transmission was received, she’s told, but now no one knows where the plans are. Had she brought the data tapes?

Had she?

She doesn’t have them now. She tries to remember what happened to them. Had she simply left them in the transmitter? Hadn’t she taken them with her? Why not?

Did everyone die for nothing, then? Bodhi, and Chirrut, and Baze, all gone; K2; all of those men that Cassian had rounded up, all to follow her, and in the end, had she failed after all?

She wraps her hand around the piece of kyber crystal she wears around her neck. Her lips move, forming the words “rebellions are built on hope,” but no sound passes through. The plans are out there. Someone received that transmission. _Trust the Force,_ her mother had told her; the last words her mother had ever spoken to her. She will trust it now. The plans are out there somewhere, and they will find their way home.

* * * * *

A medic eventually prevails upon Jyn to eat something and try to sleep. Cassian is unconscious, and he will be for some time; he’s been sedated. It’s rare for anyone to wake up while they’re in the tank.

So she eats a little food and she sleeps, and she dreams unsettling dreams that might be memories, but when she wakes up she can’t recall anything.

A woman comes and looks at Cassian. Jyn doesn’t know who the woman is, and she’s afraid to ask. Suddenly she remembers that she barely knows Cassian; for all she knows he could be married; this could be his wife. It’s easy to forget that he only became the most important person in her world yesterday.

The woman gives Jyn a small smile. “He’ll be all right,” the woman says. She has a slight accent, similar to Cassian’s. “He’s survived worse.” 

How do you know, Jyn wants to ask. Do you love him? Does he love you? She can’t seem to find her voice, which has never been a problem for her before. The woman touches the glass wall of the tank and says something in a language Jyn can’t understand, and then she leaves.

* * * * *

Cassian isn’t going to die today. He’s still unconscious, but he’s been taken out of the tank, cleaned up, put in a bed, and that’s where he is. Jyn can’t stop herself from running her finger along the lines of his face, and she takes his hand and kisses it, and she waits. She keeps waiting.

She is aware, vaguely, that outside this room, things are happening. The plans are still missing. The mission has been deemed a failure, more or less. When Cassian wakes up, thinks Jyn, we’ll fix it. We’ll find a way. When he wakes up.

* * * * *

He does wake up, and she sees him blinking his eyes in confusion and she leans over him. He looks surprised, but glad, to see her. “Jyn,” he says. “Are we dead?”

The question is so unexpected, and he sounds so sincere when he asks it, that she starts to laugh, and then she is laughing and crying at the same time, and he has a confused little smile on his face and she says, “No. No, I think we’re alive.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” he says, and she laughs again, and goes to wipe her tears away, but he raises a hand to her face and does it for her, and the world seems to shift on its axis for a moment, and he says, “Jyn,” and there is something in his voice that she hasn’t heard before, something gentle. His hand is still on her face, and she raises her own to hold his there, and she shuts her eyes for a moment. Whatever else is going to happen, or not happen, let her have this moment.

“Jyn,” he says again. “You should have left me there. You could have died.”

“I’m sorry I saved your life,” she says.

“No you’re not.” 

She opens her eyes again and he is smiling at her, and even battered as he is, he is radiantly beautiful when he smiles.

“No,” she says. “I’m really not.”

* * * * *

Cassian being Cassian, he starts asking questions almost right away. He needs to know what’s happening, how long he’s been out of action, what the next steps are, and when he can get back to work. Jyn can’t bear to be the one to tell him that the plans are missing and everyone considers their mission a failure, but the general arrives barely ten minutes after Cassian wakes up, and he orders Jyn to leave so he can debrief Cassian, and she doesn’t want to leave him even for a moment, but she does. She slinks away, and wraps her hand around her crystal and starts to whisper Chirrut’s mantra: I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. It’s grounding, calming, like being around Chirrut was; that cheerful tranquility, so steady, so easy, so _present._ She wishes he were here now. 

The plans are still out there, somewhere.

The base is in an uproar. The Death Star has been used again, has shown its full power, on the most unexpected target: Alderaan. Alderaan, the jewel of the galaxy, the planet of beauty. No one thought they would start with a world like that. A rich world, an influential world. A world with two billion souls on it, now gone.

Papa, she thinks. Oh, Papa. We failed. She is afraid to show her face anywhere, knowing they will blame her. _I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. Rebellions are built on hope. Trust the Force._

Maybe she was right all along, and she died on Scarif, and this is hell.

* * * * *

When she sees Cassian again, he looks hollowed out and empty. He meets her eyes and tries to smile, but it’s weak. “We tried,” he says. “At least we tried.”

“The plans are out there, somewhere,” she says. “They are. I know they are. Somebody’s got them, and they’re going to bring them home.”

He looks at her and she can see how much he wants to agree with her. He nods, a tiny nod, and then he closes his eyes. She runs her hand over his hair, which is stiff from dried bacta which didn’t get fully washed out, and he exhales unsteadily, something which might, if he were someone else, almost become a sob.

“We can’t give up hope yet, Cassian,” she says, her voice small and shaky. Who is she trying to convince? Both of them.

“You’re right,” he says, but she can see the glitter of tears at the corners of his eyes.

“You should get some sleep,” she says. He nods. He doesn’t open his eyes, and she knows it’s because if he does, the tears will escape, and she doesn’t think that Cassian has ever let anyone see him cry.

* * * * *

Cassian is still confined to his bed when the miracle happens. They’ve stopped talking about it, because neither of them can bear to look at the magnitude of their failure. Cassian is restless. He argues with the medics whenever they come to check on him and tell him he can’t leave yet. He’s fine, he insists, he needs to get back to work. She can see how badly he wants to get out of this bed, to go _do_ something, anything, besides lie here and ruminate on how badly everything has gone, how he disobeyed orders and got all those people killed and it was all for nothing.

It’s all her fault. Why didn’t she bring the data tapes? She hadn’t thought they would escape. She had assumed they would both die on that planet, so there was no point in trying to bring the tapes along. The transmission was their only hope.

So when the miracle happens, neither of them can quite believe it.

A young woman in a white robe sweeps into the room. She must be about Jyn’s age, or a few years younger, but she has the easy confidence and poise of someone who is accustomed to being treated with deference. “You’re Jyn Erso,” she says. Jyn nods and stands up. The young woman reaches out and takes her hand. “I’m Leia. I wanted to tell you myself: I’ve brought the plans.”

Jyn’s knees fail her and she falls back into her chair. “You’ve done what?” she whispers. “How?”

“That’s a long story, and we don’t have time for it now,” says Leia. “Now we just have to hope that we can find the weakness your father told you about before they get here.”

“Before they get here?” echoes Cassian.

“They’ll be following me,” says Leia. “We all still might die. But we have some hope. How are you, Captain?”

“Still alive,” he says. “For now.”

“Let’s hope you stay that way,” says Leia. “Thank you. Both of you. I’m sorry I can’t stay.”

“No,” says Cassian. “Of course you can’t, not if they’re coming here. Go somewhere safe.”

“Oh, I’m not leaving _Yavin,”_ says Leia. “I have work to do.”

“Your Highness,” says Cassian.

“I’ve heard it all already, Captain, from people who way outrank you, and they couldn’t convince me to leave, so unless you think you can physically carry me out of here and onto a ship, you should save your energy.”

“See if I don’t.”

The girl leans down and kisses Cassian on the forehead. “Get some rest.”

“I haven’t done anything but rest since I woke up,” he says.

“Well you look like hell, so get some more.” She takes Jyn’s hand again. “Thank you, Jyn Erso. I’m so sorry about your father. I’ll see you again, I’m sure.”

“Princess,” says Cassian as she’s leaving. She turns back. “I’m sorry,” he says.

For a moment, the girl looks small, and lost, and young, and then an impassive mask drops over her face. “There’s nothing any of us could have done, Cassian.” She leaves before anyone can say anything else.

“Why did you call her ‘princess?’” Jyn asks after a moment.

“Because that’s what she is,” says Cassian. “A princess. A real one. Or… she was. I don’t know what she is now. Her mother is — was — the queen of Alderaan.”

Everything goes crooked for a moment and Jyn sags back into her seat, finding it hard to draw breath, much less speak. Cassian reaches for her hand and she sits there for a while, staring at nothing, trying to understand.

“How do _you_ know a princess?” she says. How do you know a princess well enough for her to be kissing you, is what she wants to say, but she leaves that bit out. He probably hears it, anyway.

“I used to babysit her,” says Cassian, and she’s never heard a more absurd combination of words so she just stares at him, and he smiles. “Not literally. But I used to try to keep an eye on her when I could, and she ran messages for me sometimes. She’s a good kid but she’s a trouble magnet. I was always worried she was going to get herself kidnapped or something. Guaranteed, if she’d heard about us going to Scarif before it happened, she’d have tried to stow away on the ship and come with us.”

“Poor girl,” whispers Jyn. “Does she have any family? I mean, family that’s…” Still alive, she doesn’t finish.

Cassian shakes his head. “I don’t think so. When Draven ‘debriefed’ me, by which I mean when Draven came in here and screamed at me for disobeying orders until his voice gave out, he said Organa — that’s her father, General Organa, you probably saw him at the council meeting — is presumed dead.”

“Poor girl,” says Jyn again, clutching her crystal in one hand, and Cassian’s hand in the other.

* * * * *

“No, you can’t go back on duty,” the medic says again.

“I’m _fine,”_ Cassian insists. “I’m not going to get any better lying around doing nothing.”

“That’s exactly how you’re going to get better,” says the medic. “I’m not signing off on you returning to duty until you’re healthy enough to do it, Captain, and that’s final.”

“Fuck you,” says Cassian.

When the medic is gone, he sighs. “I feel like I’m being punished,” he says.”I have to get out of this bed.”

“The more you argue with them, the longer they’ll make you stay,” says Jyn. “Doctors are narcissists.”

“Yeah,” says Cassian, moody. “Aren’t you going crazy just sitting here all day, though?”

She shrugs. “I don’t have anything else to do,” she says. That’s not everything, though, and maybe he knows it. She looks at the floor. “And I… like being here. With you.” It comes out fast and quiet, and she sneaks a glance at him, holding her breath.

There’s a pause and then, slowly, Cassian says, “I like you being here, too.”

Neither of them can quite manage to look at the other.

“Jyn,” says Cassian, after a long pause. “Can I kiss you?”

She looks up, surprised. Cassian looks at her, steady. She comes closer, leans over him like she did when he first woke up. She touches his face. His beard is growing in and it feels softer than it did a few days ago, when she touched his face while he was still unconscious. “Cassian,” she says, and it comes out barely a whisper.

“Jyn,” he answers, and then their lips finally touch. It’s a soft kiss; barely there at first, and then when she opens her eyes again he has a little smile on his face, his beautiful face, and he reaches up and touches her cheek, so she kisses him again.

He lifts the thin blanket and tries to pull her into the bed next to him, grimacing a little as he rolls onto his side to make room for her. “Are you okay?” she asks, concerned.

“It’s fine,” he says. “It doesn’t hurt that much.” He kisses her again, and his arm goes over her waist, pulling her closer. She runs her hand along the planes of his face, to the back of his head, tangling her fingers in his hair, and feels his hand slip up under her shirt, gently stroking her back. The kisses which started slow and gentle are growing in urgency, and his hand travels down now, over her backside and onto her thigh, pulling her up against him, pressing his knee up between her legs, a delicious pressure right where she wants it most. A little sound comes out of her throat and he seems to take that as his cue to start working on the buttons of her trousers and then to try to tug them down over her hips.

She feels a hysterical laugh building up inside her, because what if the medic comes back, or what if someone comes to visit? But she can’t stop kissing him, and now she’s got her hands on the waist of the thin medbay-issued pants he’s wearing, and she’s trying to pull them off of him. He shifts to his back, wincing a little, and she pauses. She had been about to start kissing his stomach, but now she can see how bruised he still is, all purple and green along his ribs.

“Cassian,” she says gently. “Are you sure this is a good idea? This looks… really bad.” 

“At this point,” he says, “I don’t really care if it’s a good idea or not.” He strokes his hand along her face. “They’re on their way here. We just barely got away from that thing, twice. I don’t want to count on us getting lucky a third time. Just be really gentle, I’ll be fine. If we survive, they can always stick me back in the bacta tank.”

“You’re out of your mind,” she tells him, kissing him gently. His hand slips between her legs and she moans softly, rubs against it. 

“I am,” he says, “completely out of my mind. You’re right.” His fingers are gently teasing her, almost but not quite inside. She starts to kiss his neck, careful to keep her weight off of his torso, and he moans.

She hesitates. “Was that a good moan or a bad moan?” she asks.

“Good,” he says. “Mostly good.” He smiles weakly at her. “I’ll tell you if I need to stop. I promise.”

“Okay,” she says, and kisses him again. Whatever he says now, she’s sure that sex will be too painful for him, but there are other ways they can be together.

“Where are you going?” he asks as she moves away, and then, “oh,” as she puts her mouth around him. He breathes out her name and strokes her hair with one hand, whimpering. She looks up at him. His eyes are closed, his head thrown back, his lips moving a little, whispering something she can’t hear.

“Jyn,” he says. “Jyn, wait.” She backs off, worried she’s managed to hurt him after all. “That’s…” he takes a breath and sighs it out. “That’s very nice, but that’s not what I want. I want… I want you, Jyn. Please.” He looks embarrassed to be asking for anything.

“Cassian,” she whispers. “You’re too hurt.”

“I’m not,” he says, “I promise I’m not. I’m not that delicate.” He strokes his fingers along her face again, brushes them across her lips. “Unless… you don’t want to. That’s okay, if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” she says softly. She really, really wants to. He kisses her and tries to push her trousers down again. “Okay,” she says. “Give me a second here.” She swings her legs over the side of the bed so she can pull her trousers and her underwear all the way down and leave them on the floor.

She goes very slowly, very carefully, easing him inside her gently. It’s been a while since she did this with anyone, so it takes her a moment to adjust to how it feels. “Jyn,” he breathes.

“You’re okay?” she asks.

“Better than okay,” he tells her.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispers.

“You won’t,” he says. “You won’t.”

Slowly, slowly, she starts to move her hips as she leans over him, still careful not to put any weight on his bruised torso. It’s like a strange game, trying to do this without hurting him, holding herself back, being gentle and slow, when what she really wants — what she suspects they _both_ want — is something faster and rougher, to feel herself crushed underneath him. Instead she moves slowly, holding his face in her hands, looking into his eyes, and he is so beautiful, and warm, and his expression is sweetly astonished like he can’t quite believe that this is really happening, and neither can she.

Eventually he does need to ask her to stop, and she pulls her clothes back on and then lies down next to him, and he falls asleep, and she tries not to wonder what any of this means.

* * * * * 

“Are you still milking this, you lazy son of a bitch?” That woman who had visited briefly while Cassian was in the tank is in the doorway of the room.

“Elaria? What fucking sewer tunnel did you crawl out of?” Cassian asks, but he’s smiling. Lit up, really. Jyn recognizes the easy camaraderie of people who’ve fought together for a long time. She wonders if she should leave, but Cassian has hold of her hand and doesn’t let it go, so she stays.

“If my mother could see you still lying around in a bed, being waited on like a king, because you had a little fall, she’d kick your ass,” says the woman, coming in. 

“Tell it to los fucking médicos. They’re the ones who won’t let me get up.”

“I’ll tell them you’re a known malingerer,” she says, cheerfully. “A Fest boy isn’t going to get any better sitting on his ass all day. These Core people, they don’t know what they’re doing.” 

“So,” says Cassian, “I can’t help but notice that the planet hasn’t exploded.”

“See, I knew it,” says the woman, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Everybody’s too busy drinking and screwing each other to bother telling our beloved heroes about it. Yeah, we won. Sort of. I mean I think we’re down to like… maybe five X-Wings left and two pilots, tops, so it’s kind of a mixed victory. But the Death Star’s gone.”

“Really?” gasps Jyn, the first time she’s spoken since the other woman entered the room.

“Really. It is a crazy story,” she says. “It was this kid, brand new, from the absolute middle of no-fucking-where — and I don’t know if you know this,” she says to Jyn, “but that’s really saying something coming from a Festian — shows up with the princess, hops in an X-Wing, makes an impossible shot at the last second, and blows the thing apart. Never even flown an X-Wing before. So he might have overshadowed you guys a little, heroics-wise.”

“You said we’re down to two pilots?” says Cassian, frowning.

“Yeah,” she says. “The new kid and Antilles and that’s about it.”

“So we’re… still fucked.”

“We’ll worry about it later,” she says. 

“Do you have any idea how—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Cass. I’m going back to the party. You lie here and worry yourself to death like you like to do. We’ll figure it all out when we sober up. You wanna come with me?” she asks Jyn. “It’ll be more fun than listening to him moan.”

Jyn shakes her head. “I’m good, thank you.”

The woman turns back to Cassian and says something in that other language. It sounds like a question, and Cassian looks down and says something that sounds like “see.”

The other woman grins and says, “good. I’ll see you later then, Cass.” She stands up. “You better be out of this bed the next time I see you. And don’t you ever go off on some suicide mission without telling me again. Te quiero, you dumb motherfucker.”

“Te quiero,” he echoes as she leaves.

“What did she ask you?” says Jyn, even though clearly she wasn’t meant to know.

“Oh,” says Cassian, not looking at her. “She asked if you and I were… together.”

“Oh.” She felt her face get warmer. “And what did you tell her?”

“I told her yes,” he says, apparently finding it a bit hard to meet her eyes. “I don’t want to make assumptions about… what happened, but I was kind of on the spot.”

Jyn smiles a little, looking down at her hands.

“Is that… did I tell her the truth?” asks Cassian, hesitating. The words seem to be hard for him to say. “Is that something… you would want?”

She nods, and now it’s she who has a hard time looking at him. She manages to get out a small “yes.” Why is this so hard, so frightening? She knows how she feels about him, has known it for a while. But admitting it is something else.

He holds his hand out to her, and she takes it. His hand is familiar by now; she’s been holding it so often the last few days. The warmth of it feels nice.

“I don’t…” he starts, hesitant. “I don’t really know… how to do that.”

“Seemed like you did earlier,” she says, and he almost laughs, which she doesn’t think she’s ever seen him do before. 

“Not _that,”_ he says. “Plenty of practice with _that._ I mean the other stuff… I haven’t been in, you know, a _relationship,_ since I was… I don’t know, fifteen?”

She crawls into the bed next to him again, curls up facing away from him. It’s too hard to talk about this face to face. He curls around her, arm over her waist, face against the back of her neck.

“Neither have I,” she says softly. “Well, sixteen.” She’s trembling, a little. “What does ‘te quiero’ mean?”

“It’s like ‘I love you,’ but the way you say it to a family member, not like how you say it to, you know…”

“But you two have slept together, though.”

“Yeah. A bunch of times, but not recently. Is it super obvious?” 

She can’t help laughing a little. “Call it an educated guess.” She threads her fingers through his, holds his hand against her heart. “What happens now?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess we’ll figure it out. I really…” he hesitates again. “...like you. A lot.”

She smiles. “I really like you, too.”


End file.
